Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power
    World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power
    World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power
    Ebook383 pages3 hours

    World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power

    By Merriam Press

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Merriam Press World War 2 In Review Series. The following articles on World War II are in this issue: (1) The French Air Force in 1940: Was It Defeated by the Luftwaffe or by Politics? (2) Aerial Reconnaissance in World War II (3) American 25th Air Service Group (4) Supply Kings: 31 Squadron, RAF (5) Eighth Air Force, USAAF (6) Second Air Division Organization, Eighth Air Force (7) With Five Focke-Wulfs on Her Tail (8) Lieutenant Colin Kelly, USAAC (9) Lieutenant General Edward J. Timberlake, USAAF (10) Johnny Eager: The Legend of American Ace Jerry Johnson (11) Fighter Combat Tactics in the Southwest Pacific Area (12) The Forgotten Allies: A French Family’s Contribution (13) Naval Air Station Bermuda Annex (14) Burtonwood Airfield (RAF/USAAF) (15) Brigadier General Harold H. George, USAAF (16) British Glider Pilot Regiment (17) Frachtenschlepper: Glider-Towing Units of the Luftwaffe with 206 B&W/color photos/illus.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateOct 5, 2019
    ISBN9780359961795
    World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power

    Read more from Merriam Press

    Related to World War 2 In Review No. 64

    Related ebooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Carpetbaggers

      Apr 30, 2019

      The Carpetbaggers
      6 min read

    • Article

      Discovering Rommel’s HQ

      Oct 2, 2017

      Erwin Rommel in 1942. The ‘Desert Fox’ was known for his personally humane conduct compared to other German commanders and he even described the North African campaign as a “War without Hate” “HIS EYES WERE OPEN, BUT HE WAS DEAD, WHICH WAS A SHOCK BE

      5 min read

    • Article

      Fast And Furious

      Apr 5, 2022

      Fast And Furious
      13 min read

    • Article

      Battle Of The Beams

      Aug 31, 2021

      Battle Of The Beams
      13 min read

    • Article

      Carriers at War

      Apr 5, 2022

      Carriers at War
      1 min read

    • Article

      Lost And Found

      Apr 5, 2022

      Lost And Found
      8 min read

    • Article

      Defender Of The Homeland

      Jun 7, 2022

      Defender Of The Homeland
      2 min read

    • Article

      Opening Antwerp

      Sep 4, 2018

      Opening Antwerp
      11 min read

    • Article

      War Horsa

      Aug 15, 2019

      War Horsa
      7 min read

    • Article

      Operation Bodenplatte

      Feb 26, 2020

      Operation Bodenplatte
      2 min read

    • Article

      America’s “Few”

      Jan 20, 2022

      America’s “Few”
      8 min read

    • Article

      Flying The “George”

      Jun 16, 2020

      Flying The “George”
      4 min read

    • Article

      Air Zoo Camel

      Aug 3, 2021

      Air Zoo Camel
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Bet Lost, The Battle Won

      Feb 25, 2020

      A Bet Lost, The Battle Won
      11 min read

    • Article

      M3 Lee

      Sep 2, 2021

      M3 Lee
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Best Dive Bomber

      Dec 22, 2020

      The Best Dive Bomber
      4 min read

    • Article

      King Of Hollywood Pilots

      Mar 3, 2020

      King Of Hollywood Pilots
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Other Missile Crisis

      Dec 22, 2022

      The Other Missile Crisis
      7 min read

    • Article

      Killing Königsberg

      Jan 24, 2023

      Killing Königsberg
      13 min read

    • Article

      One Deadly Day

      Oct 26, 2021

      One Deadly Day
      5 min read

    • Article

      Clash On The Devil’s Bridge

      Jun 18, 2020

      Clash On The Devil’s Bridge
      7 min read

    • Article

      Crusader down

      Sep 4, 2018

      Crusader down
      10 min read

    • Article

      From Wehrmacht To U.s. Army

      Nov 24, 2020

      From Wehrmacht To U.s. Army
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for World War 2 In Review No. 64

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      World War 2 In Review No. 64 - Merriam Press

      World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power

      World War 2 In Review No. 64: Air Power

      F:\Working Data\Merriam Press Logo CS.jpg

      Hoosick Falls, New York

      2019

      First eBook Edition

      Copyright © 2019 by Merriam Press

      Additional material copyright of named contributors.

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

      The views expressed are solely those of the authors.

      ISBN 978-0-359-96179-5

      This work was designed, produced, and published in the United States of America by the Merriam Press, 489 South Street, Hoosick Falls NY 12090.

      Notice

      The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

      Mission Statement

      World War 2 In Review presents articles and pictorials on topics covering many aspects of World War II, with coverage from the 1930s through the end of the war. In addition to new articles and pictorials on topics not previously covered, future volumes may include additional material on the subjects covered in this volume. The volumes in this series will comprise a single source for innumerable articles and tens of thousands of images of interest to anyone interested in the history and study of World War 2.

      The Images

      These photos are seventy-plus years old, were taken under less than ideal conditions, and some were taken by individuals who were neither professional photographers nor using professional equipment. Thus, the quality of the original image may be less than perfect. While Merriam Press tries to obtain the best quality images possible, the quality of the images in this publication will no doubt vary greatly.

      World War 2 In Review utilizes the editor’s collection of tens of thousands of photographs and other illustrative material acquired since 1968. Hundreds of sources over the years have been searched for material on every subject.

      Photographs Needed

      Merriam Press welcomes any contributions of photographs from the 1930s through the end of World War II for future volumes in this series. Because of the low price of this publication, no payment can be made for their use, but whenever possible, credit will be given.

      How to Use This Publication

      To get the best viewing experience on a computer, the use of the Adobe Digital program is highly recommended. This free program is available from Adobe.

      To view the images properly, adjust the program’s viewing window’s right side edge accordingly. If the viewing window is too wide, images may overlap, and moving the right side edge will fix this.

      •

      Welcome to No. 64 of the World War 2 In Review Series

      The following articles are in this issue of World War 2 In Review:

      (1) The French Air Force in 1940: Was It Defeated by the Luftwaffe or by Politics?

      (2) Aerial Reconnaissance in World War II

      (3) American 25th Air Service Group

      (4) Supply Kings: 31 Squadron, RAF

      (5) Eighth Air Force, USAAF

      (6) Second Air Division Organization, Eighth Air Force

      (7) With Five Focke-Wulfs on Her Tail

      (8) Lieutenant Colin Kelly, USAAC

      (9) Lieutenant General Edward J. Timberlake, USAAF

      (10) Johnny Eager: The Legend of American Ace Jerry Johnson

      (11) Fighter Combat Tactics in the Southwest Pacific Area

      (12) The Forgotten Allies: A French Family’s Contribution

      (13) Naval Air Station Bermuda Annex

      (14) Burtonwood Airfield (RAF/USAAF)

      (15) Brigadier General Harold H. George, USAAF

      (16) British Glider Pilot Regiment

      (17) Frachtenschlepper: Glider-Towing Units of the Luftwaffe

      with 206 B&W and color photographs, maps and illustrations.

      The French Air Force in 1940: Was It Defeated by the Luftwaffe or by Politics?

      by Lieutenant Colonel Faris R. Kirkland, USA (Ret.)

      F:\Working Data\WW2 In Review\WR Published\WR - 064 - Air Power - Photos\WR064-LE1_files\image002.jpg

      Dewoitine D.520.

      *

      During the Battle of France in May-June 1940, French Army commanders complained that German aircraft attacked their troops without interference by the French Air Force. French generals and statesmen begged the British to send more Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter squadrons to France. Reporters on the scene confirmed the German domination of the skies, and the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Luftwaffe came to be accepted as one of the principal causes of the French collapse.[1]

      The air force was a convenient scapegoat for the French Army generals who dominated the Vichy regime that ruled France under the Germans. By attributing the defeat of French forces to weakness in the air, the army officers diverted attention from their own failures. Moreover, the Vichy leaders were able to strengthen their claim to legitimacy by blaming the parliamentary regime they had supplanted for failing to provide a sufficient number of aircraft. The Vichy leaders also reproached the British for holding the bulk of their air force in the British Isles. Concurrently, the Vichy army officers used the defeat of the air force to justify abolishing the air ministry and the air force general staff, incorporating their functions into the war ministry and army general staff and returning the air force to its former status as a branch of the army. With the army controlling the postwar sources of information, for many years there was no voice to challenge the official position that France had lost the war because the prewar politicians had not equipped the air force adequately.

      Since the mid-1960s, fragments of information—aviator’s memoirs, production reports, aircraft inventories, and Anglo-French correspondence—have come to light. These sources reveal four new facts about the French Air Force.

      The French aviation industry (with modest assistance—about 15 percent—from American and Dutch producers) had produced enough modern combat aircraft (4360) by May 1940 to defeat the Luftwaffe, which fielded a force of 3270.[2]

      The French planes were comparable in combat capability and performance to the German aircraft.

      The French had only about one-fourth of their modern combat aircraft in operational formations on the Western Front on 10 May 1940.[3]

      The Royal Air Force stationed a larger proportion (30 percent) of its fighter force in France than the French committed from their own resources (25 percent).[4]

      These data exculpate the prewar parliamentary regime and the British. They raise questions about the leadership of an air force that had parity in numbers of aircraft, the aid of a powerful ally, the latest radar, and the most advanced aviation technology in Europe, yet lost a defensive battle over its own territory.[5]

      French Aviation Technology Between the Wars

      The French aviation industry built more warplanes during the interwar period than any of its foreign competitors. The Bréguet 19 bomber of 1922 (1500 built) and the Potez 25 army cooperation aircraft of 1925 (3500 built) were the most widely used military aircraft in the world. (No more than 700 examples of any other type of military aircraft were built in any country during the interwar period.) One Bréguet 19 flew across the Atlantic in 1927; a group of thirty Potez 25s circumnavigated Africa in 1933.[6]

      French bombers were consistently and technically excellent. The Lioré et Olivier 20 of 1924 was the fastest medium bomber in the world for three years, and it gave birth to a half-dozen derivative designs. The Potez 542 of 1934 was the fastest bomber in Europe until 1936. In 1935, the Amiot 143, which equipped eighteen squadrons, carried a two-ton bomb load at 190 mph at 25,920 feet. Its German contemporary, the Dornier Do 23G, carried half the bomb load thirty miles per hour slower at 13,780 feet. During the following year, the Bloch 210, with a service ceiling of 32,480 feet, began to equip what would ultimately be twenty-four squadrons. No foreign bomber built before 1939 reached 30,000 feet.

      The Farman 222 of 1936 was the first modern four-engine heavy bomber. Production models reached operational units at the same time that the service test examples (Y1B-17) of the Boeing Flying Fortress were delivered and two years ahead of the production version (B-17B). Typical performance envelopes—5510 pounds of bombs, 1240 miles, at 174 mph for the Farman, versus 2400 pounds of bombs, 1500 miles, at 238 mph for the Y1B-17—showed the designs to be technically comparable, with the French emphasizing load carrying and the Americans emphasizing speed. Design evolution of the two types tended to increase the speed of the Farman derivatives (to 239 mph for the model 223.4 of 1939) and the load-carrying capacity of the Boeing (to 4000 pounds of bombs, 1850 miles at 211 mph for the B-17G of 1943). Neither design was capable of long-range daylight bombing operations in its 1940 form. The Farman was used exclusively for night raids.

      The Lioré et Olivier 451, at 307 mph, and the Amiot 354, at 298 mph, were the fastest medium bombers during the opening phases of World War II, outpacing the 1940 operational versions of the German Schnellbomber types—the Dornier Do 17K (255 mph), Heinkel He 111E (261 mph), and Junkers Ju 88A (292 mph). The Bloch 174 reconnaissance bomber of 1940 was, in operational configuration, the fastest multiengine aircraft in the world (329 mph).

      French fighter aircraft held eleven out of the twenty-two world airspeed records set between the wars, and seven were held by one aircraft—the Nieuport-Delage 29 fighter of 1921. The Gourdou-Leseurre 32 monoplane fighter of 1924 was the world’s fastest operational fighter until 1928, when the Nieuport-Delage 62 overtook it. In 1934, the Dewoitine 371 held the honor; and in 1936, the Dewoitine 510 was the first operational fighter to reach 250 mph.[7] The Dewoitine 501 of 1935 was the first fighter to mount a cannon that would fire through the propeller hub. The French fighters in action during 1939-40 were extremely maneuverable, powerfully armed, and able to outfight the Messerschmitt Bf 109E and Bf 110C, as well as the German bombers.

      Only in the summer of 1938 did the air ministry begin awarding contracts of sufficient size to warrant the construction of facilities for mass production of aircraft and engines. Concurrently, the French government began a program of funding the expansion of production facilities in the United States to produce Curtiss fighters, Douglas light bombers, Martin light bombers, Pratt and Whitney engines, and Allison engines. By May 1940, French manufacturers were producing 619 combat aircraft per month, American firms were adding 170 per month against French orders, and the British were producing 392 fighters per month. German production of combat aircraft, averaging 622 per month during 1940, was little more than half that of the industries supporting the Allies.[8] The traditional explanation of the French defeat in terms of inadequate supplies of aircraft and aircraft that were inferior in quality does not stand up. The psychological and political milieu in which the air force evolved during the interwar years offers more substantive bases for understanding what happened to the French Air Force.

      Interservice and Civil-Military Political Issues

      The French Air Force was born, grew, and went into combat in an atmosphere of political intrigue. Air force officers were embroiled in three internecine struggles concurrently throughout the interwar period: animosity between the political left and the regular army that had begun before 1800; bureaucratic strife between army officers and aviators about the control of aviation resources, which began during the First World War; and a pattern of coercion and deceit between leaders of the air force and politicians—who, in the late 1920s, began to use the service for political ends.

      At the core of French civil-military relations for the past two centuries had been fear on the part of the political left of repression by the regular army. The regular army had repressed leftist uprisings in bloody confrontations in 1789-90, 1848, and 1871. It had supported rightwing coups d’état in 1799 and 1851, and a possible coup by General Georges Boulanger had alarmed the politicians in 1889. One of the principal issues in the Dreyfus Affair of 1894-1906 was the claim by the army that the word of its officers was not subject to question by civilian authority. The politicians prevailed over the officers and seized every opportunity to weaken and humiliate them. The Combes and the Clemenceau governments in 1905-07 forced Catholic officers to supervise the seizure of church property, degraded them in the order of precedence, and appointed a Dreyfusard general as minister of war. A right-of-center government in 1910 used the regular army to crush striking railway workers, confirming the leftists’ perceptions of the army as their enemy. In 1914, a central tenet of the Socialist program was replacement of the regular army with a popular militia. The left won the election of 1914 but could not enact its program because war began two months later. During the war, the generals assumed extraordinary power and robbed the left of its electoral victory. But in 1924, the left again won control of the government and moved swiftly against the regular army. A series of laws in 1927-28 reduced the army from a combat force to a training establishment, a 1931 law mandated laying off 20 percent of the regular officers, and two laws (1928 and 1933) amputated military aviation from the army and navy and set it up as a separate service. Though there were logical arguments favoring an independent air force, the move was primarily a demonstration of the politicians’ power over the military leaders.

      The aviators’ welcomed the politicians’ support because they had been struggling with officers of the ground arms since 1917 concerning the appropriate role for military aviation. The flyers saw aviation as most effective when employed in mass to strike at decisive points designated by the commander in chief, but each army general wanted a squadron under his direct orders. The aviators had achieved their objective, on paper, in the organization of the 1st Aviation Division in April 1918. The division was a powerful striking force of twenty-four fighter squadrons and fifteen bomber squadrons—585 combat aircraft. It could deploy rapidly to widely separated sectors and apply substantial combat power in support of the ground forces. However, the ground commanders in whose sector the 1st Aviation Division operated used the force primarily as a pool of extra fighter planes to protect their observation aircraft.[9]

      The aviators’ ability to influence the development and employment of their branch was limited by their junior status. The commanders of brigades, escadres (wings), and groups in the 1st Aviation Division were lieutenants or captains appointed as acting majors; and the divisional commander during the war was only a colonel. In the postwar army, major commands went to non-flying generals and colonels from the infantry, cavalry, or artillery. Having tasted senior command responsibility during the war with only eight to ten years of service, the leading aviators were impatient for promotion; but the structure of their branch under the army offered few positions for officers above the rank of captain (serving as commanders of squadrons, units comprising ten to twelve aircraft in peacetime).

      The formation in 1928 of an air ministry independent of the ministry of war offered the aviators a separate promotion list, the opportunity to organize the air force as they saw fit, and an air force general staff to make policy. The aviators lost no time in reorganizing to create additional positions for field grade and general officers. Between 1926 and 1937, the number of squadrons rose from 124 to 134, while the number of grouses (commanded by majors) rose from 52 to 67. The fifteen aviation regiments, formations composed of several groups, were converted to thirty escadres, each having only two groups. The number of command positions for colonels was thereby doubled. The senior aviation commands-two air divisions in 1926-were changed to four air regions in 1932 and to two air corps and six air divisions in 1937. In addition, eight army aviation commands (headed by brigadier generals) and twenty-six corps aviation commands (headed by colonels or lieutenant colonels) would come into being upon mobilization. Having created an abundance of positions for senior officers, the air ministry accelerated the promotion process: In the army, the average time in service for fast-track officers to reach major was sixteen years; colonel, twenty-six years; and brigadier general, thirty years. In the air force after 1928, these averages fell to thirteen, nineteen, and twenty-two years.[10]

      The question of aviation policy was not so easy to control. The army and the navy had fought the creation of the air ministry and the independent air force with

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1